Monday, November 29, 2010

This is my old friend, and briefly "boyfriend" Jon Laursen, as he was when I first knew him when we were about 17 or so. I remember Jon very fondly. It's odd, perhaps, that he was one of the very few people in my adult life (what passes for it) who met my grandparents and visited their home with me.

I had word yesterday that he died of cancer on Friday. A lot of people loved him over the course of his life, including me. It was a long, long time ago, half my lifetime, but I am not forgetful.

I know there are some people who stay put, more or less, in the place where they were born. They hang about, in general, with the same people all their lives. A lot of the people I went to school with still live in BC; most of them still live on the Island.

I left them all behind. Have, in fact, left a trail of people behind me that is now 6000 miles long. When I look back on my teens and childhood, it is almost like remembering a film or a book I read once. Like something that happened to someone else. In my mind, these old friends of mine will forever be 17, 22, 25...no matter what happens to me. No wonder I always have a strange feeling as though I am a replicant, grown in a vat and implanted with false memories.

I can say one thing for death, though, it makes you remember that you really exist.

But I have to say, I'm getting pretty sick of effing cancer. Nearly all the people who have died, whom I have loved in life, have been taken by cancer.

Death, be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrowDie not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,And soonest our best men with thee do go,Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as wellAnd better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Senior MPs, peers and campaign groups acclaimed this newspaper’s stand against the sprawling Brussels super-state as a turning point in the battle to win back Britain’s independence.And Eurosceptic critics of UK membership said the growing financial crisis among the euro nations this week – threatening to cost British taxpayers billions of pounds – has overwhelmingly confirmed the case for British withdrawal.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

the relief of those with rosary beads to stroke was as nothing compared to the excitement of those with an axe to grind. ‘Pope Benedict’s XVI’s change of heart on condoms marks a significant break with the damage done by one of his predecessors’ most romantic, wicked and wrong-headed policies’, enthused Andrew Brown in the Guardian. Over at the Telegraph, another commentator saw it as an undoubted positive move: ‘Yes, we secular liberals can hope that this is the start of a greater change, and we can regret the lives lost while we waited for it. But we should also recognise that it is a great change already, and that it will start to save lives now. And, however much some people will struggle to praise the pope, we should swallow our pride, and give credit where it’s due.’

The New Humanist, a vocal opponent of Benedict’s visit to the UK in September, felt confident enough to state: ‘There does appear to have been a change in tone from an organisation that has long given the impression that it is opposed to condoms in all circumstances.’ Such has been the near tectonic shift from blaming the pope for killing Africans to praising him for rescuing them that even the continent itself piped up: ‘Africa welcomes pope’s comments on condoms’, ran a Agence France-Presse headline.

Yet just as it was absurd to blame leaders of the Catholic Church for the problem of AIDS/HIV in Africa, so it is equally ridiculous to see the pope as the continent’s redeemer. In both cases there is an idealism at work, an idealism that would embarrass the most immaterial of philosophers. For in this idealism, ideas – Catholic ideas – are all that matter. The pope articulates one idea, people die; he articulates another, people live.

But Twain didn't stop there. His story describes "the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues." Mark Twain is talking about goddamn social networking. He didn't just predict that the Internet would unite the world, but also that people would immediately clog it up with trivial bullshit.

Oh. Right.

Trivial bull....

"Day by day, and night by night, he called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people. ... He seldom spoke, and I never interrupted him when he was absorbed in this amusement."

"...it would be kind of weird not to acknowledge the brouhaha about the Pope’s comments that L’Osservatore Romano leaked, apparently following its mission to act as the poorly-informed, half-senile uncle who blurts out crazy stuff and makes things so awkward around the holidays. Sorry about Uncle Romano — he . . . he doesn’t really represent our family. Just give him some more pie, and maybe he’ll be quiet..."

Sunday, November 21, 2010

And shave every day. Make sure your hair and fingernails are short and clean all the time.

Don't go getting all Italian on us, mind you. There's nothing more revolting and effeminate in a man than physical vanity. A man who cannot pass a mirror or plate glass window without glancing into it, is no man. But do make the effort to be neat, clean and properly dressed. The right sort of woman will notice. Trust me.

Also, I recently had occasion to compliment a young man of my acquaintance on his corduroy trousers.

I was lucky enough to be invited to speak to the fifth annual Grand Meeting of the Corduroy Appreciation Club on November 11th, the date which most resembles corduroy. Below is the text of my address. Hail the wale...

I came to this beautiful hall in a soiled subway car, but I might as well have travelled in a grand carriage. As I walked down the street I drew sidelong glances. “Who is this man,” they seemed to say. “A man at home where-ever he travels. A man of refinement. A man of elegance. A man of corduroy.”

...

This is not some fabric reserved for oily diplomats, or gentrymen of questionable morality. Corduroy is not weak! It is not effete or innefectual or elitist. Corduroy is a fabric built to take on the world. Tuck your corduroy trousers into your boots and feed the pigs. Roll up your corduroy sleeves and bring in the harvest. Put on a corduroy field jacket and go outside to build something.

...

We join together because there is one danger so clear, so present that without the efforts of those tonight assembled we might be subsumed by evil. Consumed by that inky darkness.

While I am hesitant to even speak this evil’s name, I must, and I will.

Tonight, friends, we join together to battle velvet.

Velvet is the fabric of evil.

Confidence men and crooked bankers join together nightly in velvet-fueled bacchanalias, laughing at their latest swindles. Sickly courtesans don velvet codpieces and drink champagne toasts to their dominance of the common man. Third-world dictators rub themselves with velvet swatches while firing squads execute dissident leaders.

Louche, lude, lascivious velvet is our enemy, and there is no one to fight against it but us.

As I indicated below, I recently had occasion to re-take the old 4 Temperaments personality test and came up with what I usually come up with. But this time there was a difference that rather surprised me.

I wonder if I might be mellowing in my old age but I as somewhat surprised to see that my spread was 85% Melancholic and only 15% Choleric.

Good grief! I thought, what has happened to my cheeful, bloody-minded fightyness? Am I depressed or something? Is it the weather? The short daylight hours at this time of year? It's been stormy and windy and rainy out in the last few weeks, unusually so for this part of Italy, getting pretty dark and gloomy by 4 o'clock. Is this putting me into a Gormenghast sort of mood?

I admit that I did attend a Hallowe'en party a few weeks ago dressed entirely (and quite elegantly I might add) in black. People asked me what I was dressed up as. I managed to resist the temptation to reply, "my mood".

But being professionally Emo is just sooo 1980s. Didn't that guy from the Cure actually have the eyeliner tattooed onto his eyelids? Or was that just a rumour?

I have to admit to having admired the Goths when I was a teenager. I would have gone in for it myself, but I thought to do the thing properly you really had to be wraith-thin. We've all seen it done badly, but I thought I could do it justice. I think I just had too much of a sense of sense of personal irony to go for it though.... But really, deep down inside, I always wanted to be Morticia Addams.

A while ago, a friend was talking about her ideal wedding. The usual thing really. White fluffy dress, orange blossom, one of Rome's gorgeous Baroque churches... I will cherish the look I got when I said I'd always dreamed of an Addams Family wedding. "All the bridesmaids can wear black satin, I'll carry a bouquet of rose stems with the flowers cut off...We can have Faure's Libera Me for the processional..." She thought I was joking. (People often do.)

I can't help but think there's something more fun about the Goth subculture than we usually give them credit for. John Zmirak recently delighted me when he wrote that the appeal of the Addams Family was that they were really Goth Trad Catholics, afloat in a sea of suburban banality.

It's our very comfort with the queerness and creepiness of the whole soul-body mystery that marks the Catholic faith off from its closest competitors. I grew up loving The Addams Family, without knowing quite why, until one day as an adult I realized: These people are an aristocratic, trad-Catholic homeschooling family trapped in a sterile Protestant suburb! Shunning the utilitarianism and conformity that surrounds them, they face the Grim Reaper with rueful good cheer, in a Gothic home stock full of relics. Indeed, I think I might have spotted several Addamses at the indult parish in New York City...

I thought he hit on something there. Goths are outsiders, like us, and they are people who know instinctively that they have been robbed in the sterile materialist "real world" of something that we all have a rightful claim to.

Beauty, mystery, transcendent Reality filtering down through the sacraments, through painting and music and sculpture, into our banal little material world.

Why do we think everyone went mad for Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code?

We need secret meaning. And we have a right to the sadness that permeates life in this world.

And what's not Goth about the mummified incorrupt head of St. Catherine displayed in a silver reliquary? In fact, I'm surprised there aren't armies of Goths coming into the Church since Summorum Pontificum just for the Requiem Masses. Memento Mori and black velvet and gold thread vestments with banks of candles and skulls and crossbones everywhere? They should be like ants at a picnic.

Anyway, maybe the solution to being mildly depressed, (or maybe even seriously depressed) is to embrace it and laugh at it a bit.

“Who takes this bread and eats,” he murmured, cracking a communion wafer with his wife at his side, “declares a desire for a new world.”

With those words, Mr. Delsaert, 60, and his fellow parishioners are discreetly pioneering a grass-roots movement that defies centuries of Roman Catholic Church doctrine by worshiping and sharing communion without a priest.

Don Bosco is one of about a dozen alternative Catholic churches that have sprouted and grown in the last two years in Dutch-speaking regions of Belgium and the Netherlands. They are an uneasy reaction to a combination of forces: a shortage of priests, the closing of churches, dissatisfaction with Vatican appointments of conservative bishops and, most recently, dismay over cover-ups of sexual abuse by priests.

Ok guys. Let me explain how it works.

When you decide you don't want to be in the Catholic Church any more and you go out and start your own garage church, you don't get to hang the "Catholic" sign in front of the door.

Think of it like a corporate logo. Pepsi doesn't go around calling itself Coke.

Full implementation of the vision and teaching of the Second Vatican Council, with special emphasis on:#61550; the primacy of the individual conscience.#61550; the status and active participation of all the baptised.#61550; the task of establishing a Church where all believers will be treated as equal.

A redesigning of Ministry in the Church, in order to incorporate the gifts, wisdom and expertise of the entire faith community, male and female.

A re-structuring of the governing system of the Church, basing it on service rather than on power, and encouraging at every level a culture of consultation and transparency, particularly in the appointment of Church leaders.

A culture in which the local bishop and the priests relate to each other in a spirit of trust, support and generosity.

A re-evaluation of Catholic sexual teaching and practice that recognizes the profound mystery of human sexuality and the experience and wisdom of God’s people.

Promotion of peace, justice and the protection of God’s creation locally, nationally and globally.

Recognition that Church and State are separate and that while the Church must preach the message of the Gospel and try to live it authentically, the State has the task of enacting laws for all its citizens.

Liturgical celebrations that use rituals and language that are easily understood, inclusive and accessible to all.

Strengthening relationships with our fellow Christians and other faiths.

Full acceptance that the Spirit speaks through all people, including those of faiths other than Christian and those of no religious faith, so that the breath of the Spirit will flow more freely.

Go ahead.

Tell 'em what y'all think.

I won't stop you.

Brendan HobanTel: 086 606 5055Email: bhoban@eircom.net

But don't be mean. I think they know their revolution is over and they seem a little down about it.

The organiser described his type of Catholic as "an ageing and diminishing coterie of Vatican II aficionados huddling together for warmth"

oh... poor little guys...

So try to be nice, OK? Tell them about how great the Latin Mass is and how glad we all are the Good Pope Benedict has finally freed it for everyone to enjoy, and about how lots of Trads are so glad to be let out of the catacombs and about all the happy young people going to it, and how they are all getting married and having ten kids.

Remember this? "Lisbon will save us! We must vote Yes on the Lisbon Treaty!"

Ireland fights to stave off £77 billion bail-outIreland was fighting for its political and economic independence last night as secret negotiations began in Brussels over an international bail-out of up to £77billion.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

"The first bishop to accept a government grant was Bishop Judas Iscariot." (starting about 1:38)

Kreeft and Spencer discuss Islam.

The video is almost two hours long, which is odd for Youtube, and it takes an age to download, but it's worth the wait.

___

...I've listened to about half of it so far, and I think I am coming to the same conclusion that I have come to before. If Dr. Kreeft were right in one of his major premises, that the god of Islam and the God of Abraham are one and the same, then his arguments would be correct. He says that the Muslims worship the same God, but they understand Him imperfectly, and therefore worship Him imperfectly, but that this imperfection is merely a lack of understanding of the true nature of God.

This would support the theory that Mohammedans who behave badly, by Christian standards of morality, are being "bad" Muslims, in that they understand the nature of God even less perfectly than their slightly more enlightened co-religionists who do not behave badly. Dr. Kreeft then goes even further and says that in the areas where the Mohammedans are correct about God, they are better "Christians" than most Christians because they are more "pious" in their behaviour towards the things about God that are true. In these areas, he posits (and bizarrely, he presents their sexual morality as an example) that we lapsed and modernist Christians have "much to learn" from our Mohammedan friends.

But the entire argument rests on the assumption that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Mary and John the Baptist and Jesus, is the same as the one the Mohammedans call "Allah".

But Dr. Kreeft has failed to establish the truth of his greater premise.

If we say that our pet is a mammal because it is a cat and all cats are mammals, we have started the syllogism from the bottom and worked up. In the case of Winnie's species and phylum we would be correct. But starting the syllogism upside down in the case of Islam is dangerous.

He says that the basic premise of Islam, the total submission to God is the same as that of the saints. The Catholic Church knows that total submission to the God of Abraham turns a person into a saint. The greater the submission, the greater the saint.

What we have seen from the evidence of the last 1300 years, however, is that total submission to Allah turns men into monsters. And the greater the submission the greater the monster.

How then, can this be the same god?

Islam is a heresy. One of the things it is doing for our times is re-teaching the Church just how dangerous heresy really is. It is only too easy to chastise the nasty old imperialist medieval Church for the violent opposition to heresy. But if we look back into that history with the eyes newly cleared by our contact with Islam, we will come to understand why it became necessary to stop the spread of Catharism with force of arms. If we look at the videos of men and women being beheaded, of buildings being blown up, we come to understand just how deadly a thing heresy truly is.

Friday, November 12, 2010

The melancholic-choleric is also a leader with the potential to accomplish great works. However, where the choleric-melancholic is driven by the challenge and the opportunity, the melancholic-choleric is inspired more by the nobility of the task. The introverted nature of the melancholic, combined with the focused and unempathic nature of the choleric, can result in an individual who is highly motivated by noble ideals (even humanitarian ones), but who prefers to work alone, rather than with people. The melancholic side of both temperament mixtures results in the project being organized, ethical, and high-minded, while the choleric aspect is the driving and demanding force.

If you are melancholic-choleric, you are somewhat less pragmatic (or utilitarian) than a pure choleric, just as persevering and determined, and with a greater emphasis on the ideal. Likely to be motivated by the most noble and demanding of causes, you are capable of founding a humanitarian society, composing a symphony, founding a school, or discovering a cure. You are organized, perfectionist, introspective, driven, and moody (though less so than a pure melancholic). You will be less active than a choleric-melancholic and less extroverted, more internally focused.

But your weaknesses include a tendency to excessive self-criticism and criticism of others, being dismissive or overly judgmental, exhibiting a tendency to self-absorption, and possessing an untrusting and controlling nature. You tend to be inflexible, can bear grudges for a long time and may be prone to discouragement. A melancholic-choleric who is not attentive to his spiritual life, and does not keep his eye assiduously on the truly important things of life can become a cross to those around him, through his nit-picking, perfectionism, disdain, bitterness, resentfulness, spitefulness when crossed, and even haughtiness.

If your temperament is melancholic-choleric, for a better understanding of your temperament it is recommended that you read the full descriptions of the melancholic and choleric.

Yep. And I get the same result every time I take one of these Four Temperaments things.

I remember once reading that the local demon worshippers in Oxford wanted to put loudspeakers on the outside of their minarets to broadcast the call to idolatry all over town. There was a big controversy about it with some people wanting it stopped and others saying we have to be "culturally sensitive".

I wrote in to the paper suggesting a solution.

There are a LOT of bell towers and more than a few still-functioning bells in the city of Oxford. At the appointed time, when the heathens started howling over their loudspeakers, coordinate all the bell-ringers in the city to ring EVERY SINGLE BELL in town for the duration of the caterwauling.

Nearly all babies with Down's syndrome in western countries, and many who are only suspected to have the extra chromosome, are killed before they've taken their first breath, or seen their mother's faces.

It is utilitarianism that looks up on human beings as "things". No different from putting down a suffering dog.

"I think any good mother would..."

Did you notice the little moment of horrified silence there? It lasted for at least three beats. I think even the camera man was too shocked to remember to switch feeds.

The show asks, "Can abortion be a kindness?"

If I were a person who believes in killing people to stop them suffering, I might be inclined to answer yes, but only if we agreed to treat the unborn child with the same amount of kindness as we do suffering dogs.

That is, if we killed them by a painless injection of soporific drugs.

Instead of tearing them apart, limb from limb, with a pair of forceps or burning them to death by saline solution.

The Catholic archbishop has been killed. Priests have been riddled with bullets upon leaving their churches. Ordinary Christians, trying to live a quiet life, have been subject to harassment, threats and violence. Iraq in the aftermath of the American invasion has been particularly dangerous, but antiChristian violence stretches across the Islamic world.

"Christians are slaughtered in Iraq, in their homes and churches, and the so-called 'free' world is watching in complete indifference, interested only in responding in a way that is politically correct and economically opportune, but in reality is hypocritical," said Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan after these latest killings.

Indeed, the international community issued the usual boilerplate condemnations, most of them refusing to identify those responsible. The same statements could have been used had the Rotarians decided to massacre the Salvation Army. In the Church, too, there is often a reluctance to support vigorously Christians under attack, and to call things by name.

The blood on the altar makes it clear. No amount of goodwill, no amount of dialogue, no amount of circumlocutory evasions, no amount of supine prostrations – nothing will dissuade the jihadists. So let us not abnegate ourselves over the dead bodies of our fallen brethren in Christ.

Let us speak frankly of those who want to kill us.

Yes, please. Let's.

The jihadists respect neither man nor God, not even their own. They have killed their fellow Muslims and bombed mosques.

Because, really, the main point here is that it is only people who misunderstand Islam, true Islam, the Religion-of-Peace Islam, who become bombers in the name of Allah.

Yes, please. Won't SOMEone please "speak frankly" about those who want to kill us. And why.

Indeed, I agree. Let's "call things by name". Their proper name.

Close to 60 Catholics were killed. In their cathedral. At Mass. It has now come to this, where Christians are killed at prayer by Muslim fanatics.

Christians have been in Iraq from the earliest centuries, long before there was an Iraq or, one might note, there was Islam. Jihadists have launched a campaign with genocidal intent, aimed at driving out every last Christian from what they consider to be an Islamic land. It is now clear that the only place such jihadists envision for Christians in Iraq is the grave.

Maybe I can start with a question. Who, Fr. Ray, are these "Jihadists" you keep mentioning?

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

I had a very interesting conversation with a young man this weekend. He's from Scotland and he told me the story of his child, how he was almost aborted. He said something that I could not resist putting in the story.

He seemed a wonderful fellow. I don't know if he is married now (at 26) or has a girlfriend, but I would certainly recommend him to any young woman of the right age and correct intentions.

Towards the end of our conversation, he said something that I thought appropos to our discussion last week about marriage and its current state of decay...

“There’s a contradiction when a man is looked down upon if he’s not going to be there when his child is born, yet he’s told he has no part to play in this whole thing.

“He’s vilified for not playing a part in the child’s life, for not supporting him, whereas that’s positively encouraged from the very start of the child’s life. So it isn’t a surprise that we see men abandoning children.”

He added, “I know we’re not supposed to judge people, but I really think that what a man does in relation to his children is a way in which we can sort of measure if he’s a real man or not. Because if a man abandons his own child, then he’s not a real man in my eyes.”

How hard it is to find a real man.

Today, I found my mother's 'blog. She died in Vancouver in June 2007, a few months after I had gone to see her in April. She was not a happy woman, as I have written here before, but she found the right sort of man. Things ended tragically for her and for Graham, a story I will not tell here. But they had some years of happiness together.

Judy posted this on September 7, 2006.

Twenty-seven years ago today, on September 4, 1979, I sat on a log on Dallas Road Beach in Victoria, BC, Graham beside me. It's a day I will never forget.

That morning, I had woken up at eight, after a bad night. I'd tossed and turned and dreamed and lain awake because the only thing in my mind was the man I had so recently been introduced to. I dreamed of myself in a white wedding dress and veil—and black rubber boots, feeding chickens. That's the only memory of that dream that I still carry with me. When I woke, on that cool, sunny day, still with those images in my mind, I wanted to see him but it was a Tuesday, the day after Labour Day, and he had to work.

As I lay there, after having fed breakfast to my daughter and then having gone back to bed, though I was awake, I thought I heard a knock at the door. It came again, not loud, though firm.

My daughter and I lived on the top floor of a house, while Brenda, the landlady, lived on the lower, street-level floor. There was an outer door to my apartment and a staircase. I went to my inside door and opened it, wondering who on earth wanted to see me at that time of day but I called down the stairs, "Come in." It opened and there was Graham's face looking up to me.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

I was speechless. I stood there like a dummy until I found my voice. "Sure. Come on up."

He came up the stairs and saw that I was still in my dressing gown over my nightie. He said nothing but the ball was in my court.

"Would you like some tea?"

"Yes, that would be nice."

I led him to the kitchen at the back of the apartment, put the kettle on and bade him sit at the table. "I'll just go get dressed," I said.

By the time I was dressed, the kettle was boiling. I made tea and we exchanged some small talk over steaming cups.

"Would you like to go out?" he said. "Drive around, maybe?>

I said that I would. We left the apartment, got into his little Toyota, as he called it, and drove through Victoria. We ended up at Smitty's and I ordered a bowl of soup, since it was early lunch time. I toyed with the soup, not really hungry, wondering how I could possibly tell this man that I was in love with him. He told me that he had left work because, as chief engineer, he had that privilege and they didn't really need him because they were in a mini-refit. They weren't sailing around Vancouver island that week. Eventually, we got back into the Toyota and drove to Dallas Road Beach.

Dallas Road is a long, winding road that skirts the edge of Victoria as it follows the coastline of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The scenery is gorgeous with the Cascade Range visible on the other side of the water, one patch always with snow. At various points, you can climb down to the beach, with its sand and pebbles and various sun-bleached logs, escapees from log booms or deadheads that came ashore.

We stopped at one of those places in James Bay, the original part of Victoria. I went ahead of him, picking my way down to the sand, then toward the logs. I felt his hand on my back.

"Do you think I don't know?" he said.

I turned to look at him. My feelings tumbled around in my head, not sure which way to land. Should I be happy (why not?), disappointed (in what?), happy (now you're getting it)... I just smiled, feeling almost embarrassed (Oh, Lord). We put an arm around each other, saying nothing, and walked to a large log and sat on it. He put his arms around me, I looked up and gave him a light peck on the cheek (It had been a long time!). We clung to each other, both lost ships in the night, holding onto each other to weather the storms of our lives.

"We'd better do it," he said.

I knew immediately that he meant marriage. My heart leapt in my chest, my spine tingled and I gave him a much better kiss. I don't know how long we sat on that log, but the grey sky split open and a shaft of sunlight came on us. That was always his strongest memory of that day, that the sunlight opened up for us alone, two souls finally joined as one. "And the two shall become one." [Jesus — the Gospel of Thomas.)

He was a very religious man, in the sense that he saw God everywhere, lived as good a life as he could. No fundamentalist he, nor I. I've always wanted to see that as God, too. Perhaps it was. Eventually, we got up, walked up to the street again and walked, my hand clutched to his chest.

I'll never forget the look on his face as we walked. He shone, a smile on his lips, his eyes open and looking ahead, his body upright, chest out. He was a man again. His previous wife had left him for a boyfriend and all Graham's money. He was a big man, very strong. He wore a full beard and had a full head of brown, curly hair. He was very handsome to my eyes. And now he was complete as a man as he had never been before.

All through the brief time we had together, I never wavered in my love for him nor he in his for me. It was the kind of love that knows no limits; it took me wherever he wished to go without question. There was never a time when I had to wonder whether I loved him or not. I suggest that a woman who asks herself this is not in love; a woman who does not wish with her whole heart to go wherever he needs to go, be what he wishes to be is not in love. A man who does not wish to support his wife in her goals, so long as those goals do not compromise the marriage, is not in love. If I had wanted to move back to the coast, he would have come. I knew that. I also knew that he loved the Arctic and I would never have asked him to give it up for me.

He changed my life. I gave him years of happiness that he could not have hoped for as he had been living. I think of him every day, though he has been gone from this Earth for seventeen years. He waits for me.

This DVD was based on a series of interpretations of 7 Psalms from the bible in 1962. The 5 minute adaptations include a then new comer William Shatner along with Raymond Burr. In another very odd twist of fate the camera man on some of these pieces was George Lucas (of Star Wars fame.)

Once thought to be lost forever these pieces are available on DVD for the first time ever!

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

I would rather gnaw my own leg out of a steel trap than get on a plane right now. Just at the moment, I'm more in a mood to hide under the bed, so really...

Don't know how much posting I'll be doing, so play nicely.

Anyway, here's a few random pics to amuse you.

Finished my second Bargue drawing today. It didn't take nearly so many hours to finish this one as the last and she was more complex. It's going well, I think.

From this

to this

to this

to thise basta.

So I started on the Horse head right away.

Found this neat store that sells and repairs casts of famous things. Just up a bit from Piazza della Republica, on the way up to Santa Susanna.

Visited the nuns at San Vincenzo last weekend.

They have donkeys. They loved to be petted. When you go up to the fence, they come right over to have their ears rubbed.

Got along with the cat pretty well too.

The "new" monastery is fully restored. Built in the 11th and 12th centuries.

Little bits of the old monastery of San Vincenzo can be seen all over,

as well as plenty of old Roman columns from the Roman villa the first foundation was built on.

This thousand year old stone lion still guards the front gate.

along with a slightly newer friend.

When the nuns (from Regina Laudis in the US) first arrived in 1990, a lot of it was in ruins. It had been abandoned for 200 years.

The nearby towns, this is Rocceta al Volturno, were all built in the 9th and tenth centuries after the Saracens destroyed the old San Vincenzo monastic city. The people all literally took to the hills in a process called "encastellation".

Then... the "new" Romanesque church of San Vincenzo, built in the 10th century. The old one (8th century) was burned by the Mohammedans.

...and now

The church as it has been restored since the nuns arrived.

A bit austere for my taste.

The stones, still being recovered, from the old San Vincenzo, some of them still bearing the faint traces of the frescoes for which the monastery was famous.

From the olive groves. The nuns have over 400 trees, and could use a little help in harvest time.

As I was walking through the olive groves, I was wondering if I ought to have been wearing boots, against snakes.

Sure enough...

We also heard wolves at night, and I was told that since the population has been falling, the wolves are getting bolder. The monastery lost a sheep one day some years ago, right out of one of the front fields in broad daylight. I was told not to take walks at night, or even go out into the courtyard.

The newly restored church, behind the apse, with some of the ancient masonry.

Another nearby encastellated town.

One of the monastery's old outbuildings. Restored to serve as the nuns' pottery. One of the sisters,

Mother Philippa, is an archaeologist and she was fascinated by some of the ancient Samnite tombs they found while digging in front of the Church. They date to the 6th century BC. She started studying the pottery techniques and has made a lot of Samnite pottery.

Mother Philippa, the potter, in a rare moment when she was not smiling.

And the fruit...

I picked and ate a lot of figs.

And took home about 5 pounds of crab apples.

As well as about the same of rose hips.

They said I could come back and pick sloes. They're best for gin if you wait until the first frost.

And I said I would come back and help with the olive harvest.

The dogs and I went for a walk along the ridge, and came across this hut. Something to do with sheep, perhaps? Heaven only knows how old it is.

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